The fluttering of wings was incessant, and we could hear them "scrooping" up and down the walls. In the midst of the confusion, "Rosie" was whisked out of my arms (for fright had made us cling tighter than ever together) and planted on the top of a table at some distance from me, at which she was so frightened she began to cry, and I called out, "Powles, where are you? Can't you stop them?" My appeal was heard. Peter's voice exclaimed, "Hullo! here's Powles coming!" and all the noise ceased. We heard the advent of my friend, and in another moment he was smoothing down the ruffled hair and arranging the disordered dresses and telling me to light the gas and not be frightened. As soon as I could I obeyed his directions and found Rosie sitting doubled up in the centre of the table, but the rest of the room and furniture in its usual condition. "Peter" and his noisy crowd had vanished--so had "Powles," and there was nothing but our torn skirts and untidy appearance to prove that we had not been having an unholy dream. "Peter" is not a wicked spirit--far from it--but he is a very earthly and frivolous one. But when we consider that nine-tenths of the spirits freed from the flesh are both earthly and frivolous (if not worse), I know not what right we have to expect to receive back angels in their stead. At one time when my sister Blanche (who was very sceptical as to the possibility of the occurrences I related having taken place before me) was staying in my house at Bayswater, I asked Miss Showers if she would give us a _séance_ in my own home, to which she kindly assented. This was an unusual concession on her part, because, in consequence of several accidents and scandals that had occurred from media being forcibly detained (as I have just alluded to), her mother was naturally averse to her sitting anywhere but in their own circle. However, on my promising to invite no strangers, Mrs. Showers herself brought her daughter to my house. We had made no preparation for the _séance_ except by opening part of the folding doors between the dining-room and study, and hanging a curtain over the aperture. But I had carefully locked the door of the study, so that there should be no egress from it excepting through the dining-room, and had placed against the locked door a heavy writing-table laden with books and ornaments to make "assurance doubly sure." We sat first in the drawing-room above, where there was a piano. The lights were extinguished, and Miss Showers sat down to the instrument and played the accompaniment to a very simple melody, "Under the willow she's sleeping." Four voices, sometimes alone and sometimes _all together_, accompanied her own. One was a baritone, supposed to proceed from "Peter," the second, a soprano, from "Lenore." The third was a rumbling bass, from an influence who called himself "The Vicar of Croydon," and sung in a fat, unctuous, and conceited voice; and the